


From the Auntie Archives: The Wild West Trail Ghost Adventure

by FB Wickersham (perpetfic)



Series: The Blue Stones [8]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Gen, Magic, Supernatural - Freeform, The Blue Stones, all the female protags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 19:03:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12087402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/pseuds/FB%20Wickersham
Summary: The Aunties keep trying to take down a vengeful spirit. It's not going well.





	From the Auntie Archives: The Wild West Trail Ghost Adventure

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thank you, HugeAlienPie, for the beta work. Especially in this section because history is hard sometimes.

Auntie Minnie came storming into the house with magic flowing behind her high enough to send the flames in the lights almost as high as the chimneys. 

"You will _not_ burn the wallpaper again!" Auntie Ethel hollered as she followed her in. She mumbled a few words and swished her wand and the flames retreated to normal height before they could get higher.

"I could give a bitching damn about the wallpaper!" Auntie Minnie yelled as she kicked open a door and stopped just inside, breathing hard.

Auntie Grace, the only person in the room, did not rise from behind her desk. She took in Auntie Minnie in one look. A gash on her forehead, cuts on her hands, seething anger rolling off her so hard it was sparking the air. "Breathe, please," she said. She had a quiet, even voice in every situation, and it meant people did as she said. Auntie Minnie breathed in loud through her nose, and the sparks around her dimmed. "Do you need medical attention?"

"Yes she does!" Auntie Ethel said as she elbowed Auntie Minnie out of the way of the door and shoved her into a chair. She had a roll of bandages in one hand, a bucket of warm water in the other, and numerous goldenrod flowers poking out of the pockets of her skirt. From the rough look of the petals, Auntie Grace knew without asking that Auntie Ethel had yanked them off a nearby plant as they made their escape.

"Are you hurt/" Auntie Grace asked Auntie Ethel.

"Dusty is all. This one's the one who decided to run straight toward the damn thing."

"Damned, you mean," Auntie Minnie muttered. She tipped her head towards the light when Auntie Ethel touched her chin. 

Auntie Grace turned towards the blackboard to her left. It contained a long list. Over half of it was crossed out. "Did she exhibit any sort of human emotion?" she asked. "Besides fury," she added when she glanced over and caught the look in Auntie Minnie's eyes.

"No," Auntie Minnie responded. "We approached. She attacked. We tried the calming spells. She attacked. We tried the memory spells, she attacked harder."

"Mins got the head wound right after casting that one," Auntie Ethel said. She finished clearing the blood from Auntie Minnie's head wound and carefully laid goldenrod flowers over the cut. "Hold those," she said. Auntie Minnie kept the flowers in place as Auntie Ethel started wrapping her head.

"Before the memory spells, was she showing signs of becoming more violent?" Auntie Grace asked, tapping her fingers against her chin. 

"She's a vengeful spirit. Who knows," Auntie Minnie said.

Auntie Grace gave a shrug, conceding the point. "Before the memory spells, had she injured you at all?"

"This is all from after," Auntie Ethel said as she cleaned the wounds on Auntie Minnie's hands. "From where I was standing, it looked like the spirit was trying to get Mins to drop her wand."

Auntie Minnie smirked. "She failed."

"Good. We don't need to find out if a vengeful spirit can use our wands." Auntie Grace crossed out _calming + memory spells_ from the list on the board. She surveyed the rest of the list. "I fear we're simply guessing at this point."

"Is there anyone from her life we can bring in?" Auntie Ethel asked.

"We're still not sure who she is," Auntie Grace replied. "Auntie Bertha has been researching for days, but all we know is that our spirit is wearing clothes that are out of fashion, and that she is angry and undoubtedly died on that trail."

"There must be something significant about her," Auntie Ethel said, tapping Auntie Minnie's knee to tell her she was finished patching her up. "She's a fully formed spirit. There's power there."

"I know." Auntie Grace rubbed her brow. "I'll speak with Bertha. You two turn in. I'm sure you're exhausted after so much hard work. Thank you for your efforts."

Auntie Ethel and Auntie Minnie left, both calling 'goodnight' over their shoulders. Auntie Grace slumped for a moment after they left. She breathed in deep enough it made her feel like her ribs would burst, and then she let it out slowly. No reason anyone should see her feeling her defeat. She was headmistress. She had to stand tall for all of them.

She took another huge breath and straightened herself as she let it out. She checked her hair in the mirror and was pleased to find it smooth and neat. She walked from her office, went up a flight of stairs, turned left, then right, and came to the end of a long, spindly hallway. She opened the last door on the right and stepped into a large room so crowded with books and notebooks and papers it looked very small. "Bertie?" she called, knowing better than to try and maneuver the stacks to find her.

"Be with you!" Bertie called from someone in the depths of the room. 

Auntie Grace looked at the books on the nearest shelf while she waited. History books. Family Genealogies. Diaries. Business Ledgers. Letters and telegrams bound in cardboard covers. Family Bibles. And on and on. So many pieces of lives, and that was just a shelf. It was hard to believe they could have so much but know so little.

"The lamps went high," Auntie Bertha said as she came into sight, two ledgers and a small chapbook in her hands. "I assume Minnie and Ethel had a bad time."

"Minnie's got a gash on her head, and her hands are cut up a bit, but otherwise, she's fine. Ethel's evened out now that Minnie's patched up."

"Glad I don't have Ethel's job. None of us are good patients." Auntie Bertha put her books down on a double-wide desk that was already overflowing. She pushed back her loose hair and gave Auntie Grace a tired smile. "I don't have anything truly identifying. Just some more information on the trail she may have been on."

"That's more than we had." Auntie Grace leaned over as Auntie Bertha opened a ledger. "What did you find out?"

"That bit of trail our spirit is on was a connection point for a few different ones coming West. I can't say which one she started on, but see these numbers here?" Auntie Bertha pointed to a column filled with amounts. "That's the price from that bit of trail to the next one."

"When are these ledgers from?"

"1840."

Auntie Grace stared at the numbers. "My goodness. By today's standard, that's--"

"High as the eagle flies, yes." Auntie Bertha pulled the second ledger out from under the first and opened it to a marked page. "This one's from a stagecoach line that travelled all the lines leading up to our join. There's minimal difference in price, you see."

Auntie Grace surveyed the numbers. "What's so special about that join that the price goes up like that?"

Auntie Bertha put down the ledger and picked up the chapbook. She flipped through a few pages before holding the book up to the light so Auntie Grace could see the drawing clearly. "Based on this map I found in this journal, one fork of that join stays along pretty scenery and readily available water. The other fork goes down into the desert."

"You could load up enough water at the coach stop at the fork to do just fine either way," Auntie Grace said as she studied the map. 

"The terrain's dusty either way. The desert might be a bit grittier, but those trails were all dirt." Auntie Bertha tapped her fingers on her desk, looking at her shelves. "There's only a few reasons to go the pretty way with fresh water, and all of them are rich."

"It might be for someone's health," Auntie Grace said. "Perhaps the dry air was bad for them."

Auntie Bertha slanted her a look. "What poor person do you know could travel West by stagecoach in the first place? They walked or rode their own horses. They saved what they had for when they arrived."

Auntie Grace nodded. "That is a fair argument." She tried to follow Auntie Bertha's gaze to see what she was looking at, but all the clutter just seemed one giant, jagged piece. "So, you think our spirit had funds."

"I've been looking at fashion plates based on what the others have been able to draw or remember." Auntie Bertha walked towards the shelves, then halfway down, then crouched and picked up a small stack of tin prints. She brought them back to the desk and laid them out. "Look here. That's her hat. There's her bodice. Skirts can be harder to place because you can't always tell when it's hoops or petticoats, but these three here," she gestured to the final three prints, "all look similar to the drawings and notes the others have made."

Auntie Grace leaned down to read the dates at the bottom of the prints. "1867, 1866, 1866." She pressed a hand to her mouth. "You're sure? That's so early in the move West. We Blue Stones weren't even out here regularly yet."

"It's possible the dates are a bit off, but I think I'm in the right general spot."

"She's only been dead twenty years at most. Her strength is long beyond that."

Auntie Bertha piled the tin prints on one another again and tapped them on the desk to straighten them. "Based on the other spirits we've handled in that area, yes, but if you look at the spirits we've had to tamp down in other places…"

"You mean in Southern places." 

"I mean in other places," Auntie Bertha corrected, giving Auntie Grace a sharp look. "We've had a few spirits who came up stronger than expected, and the ones we've been able to identify seemed to be like that because they were on the verge of something when they went. A young woman travelling to the West in the early days? That's a dime novel waiting to happen."

Auntie Grace nodded slowly. "I see." She looked at Auntie Bertha. "You were right to correct me on strong spirits. They have been everywhere."

"I don't blame you for thinking of those soldiers first--those boys were loud and angry--but we're committed to all history here."

"It's the only way to know the whole story," Auntie Grace replied, an old mantra between them. "Thank you, Bertie. You've done wonders again, as always." 

"I'll keep digging. See if I can't pull another wonder or two out of something before we go again."

Auntie Grace nodded in agreement and left Auntie Bertha to her work. 

*

"But why can't we help with the spirit?" 

The question came from Trainee Stone Hazel Harrington, in her third year and sporting a bruise the size of a grapefruit on her jaw from a nearly losing battle with the weather gophers on the west lawn.

"We've been working on vengeful spirits," Trainee Stone Ida McAllister added. 

"Not like this one," Auntie Minnie said, pointing to her head wound. "Believe me, you don't want this headache."

"Shouldn't we have some real-life training with an especially malicious spirit?" Hazel prodded. "How else will we know if we can defeat it?"

Auntie Minnie looked around the room. The other trainees were nodding along. The problem with teaching a woman to fight, Auntie Minnie thought, was that once she knew how, she was invariably ready to fight _anything_. "We aunties have been repeatedly foiled by this spirit. I may have been the first noticeably injured, but we're all bruised and magic-worn where you can't see it. You know your power builds as you build yourselves. For some spirits, you're not strong enough yet. That is just the plain truth."

"We could help you," Ida said. Hazel sat with her jaw set, a sign she had given up the fight but didn't like it. "Our power could boost yours."

"No. And that is a final no. We aunties will use our own power amongst ourselves, and you young women will not assist."

Ida looked at Hazel and harrumphed at the set of her jaw. "Fine."

"Now, if you all will open your texts, let us continue our study of the moth family."

*

Auntie Grace shared Auntie Bertha's latest finds during the late-afternoon events review time the Aunties took in their shared lounge. 

"Where is Bertha?" asked Auntie Ethel. 

"Still researching. I tried to pull her away, but she wants to be certain if she can or cannot identify our spirit before we try again."

"When do we try?" asked Auntie Florence. She glanced towards the large, west-facing windows. The moon was already visible even though the sun hadn't gone down. It was three-quarters full. 

"I've been reviewing the charts," said Auntie Ella as she placed her tea cup down on her side table. "Three nights from now would be best if we want to try quickly. After that, the next upswing in power won't come until two days after the new moon."

"We have to try again sooner rather than later," Auntie Minnie said before Auntie Grace could comment. "We don't know what she'll do to anyone coming that way."

"She's only scared travellers, not hurt them," Auntie Ethel pointed out.

"We may have made her angrier last night," Auntie Minnie said. 

"She has a point," Auntie Grace said. "Our interference may have caused her to escalate."

"May have," Auntie Minnie muttered, touching the side of her head. 

"Three nights from now. Who wants to try?"

"I'll go," Auntie Florence offered. 

"And I," said Auntie Ida. 

Auntie Grace nodded. "Dusk, three nights from now, we'll see if we know anything new, and you'll go out."

*

"I can't pin her down," Auntie Bertha said at the meeting. "I've been poring through the logbooks and reservation lists from the stagecoaches, but there's no way to figure out exactly when our spirit was travelling without some other detail. I rechecked everyone's reports, and no one's noticed a monogram or heard her say anything that might be a name."

"We haven't heard her do anything but scream," Auntie Florence said. 

Auntie Ida was looking at the ceiling, her mouth moving side to side as she listened. "There were no single women travelling?"

"Lord no. Not on that route back then. The coach companies wouldn't have allowed it. It would have made them look tawdry."

"And you can't tell from the lists which travellers were killed on the way to where they were going?"

Auntie Bertha laughed. "Coach companies don't even list if people _made it_. They got paid up front."

"Handy," Auntie Florence said with a roll of her eyes. She looked at Auntie Ida, taking in the way she was squinting. "What are you piecing together?"

"A well-to-do young woman coming west as early as she did? Even coming with a companion, it's more than most of her station did. My mother still won't let up about my being out in the rough part of the country, and I moved from Boston to Denver."

"She had a sense of adventure," Auntie Florence said, seeing the thread Ida was weaving. "Coming out when it was still mostly dirt country. She probably wasn't forced here. She chose to come."

"We should invite her to stay," Auntie Ida said, her gaze dropping to take in the others in the room. "Perhaps she's angry because she can't go with the travellers, but maybe if we offer her a chance to stay rather than try and get rid of her."

Auntie Grace glanced at the board. "We haven't tried it. If it feels right when you get there, follow your instincts."

"Hopefully see you soon," Auntie Florence said, and they all hugged goodbye before she and Ida took their leave.

*

The scream blew needles off the cacti, and Florence and Ida had to duck their faces against their sleeves to keep from getting dirt in their eyes. The spirit was spread out in tatters, only the barest shape of a face and hair visible within the pointed shape.

"I'll go forward!" Ida yelled, and Florence nodded to show she heard. 

Ida walked forward slowly. The scream-wind was dying down, and the tatters were reforming into more of a human shape. The spirit was tracking Ida, weaving back and forth in a small circle like a cat tracking a bird. 

"Hello," said Ida, careful to keep her wand tucked against her arm so the spirit couldn't see it. "I'm Ida. That's Florence."

"Hello," Florence said. 

"Some of our fellows have been out here recently, and it's not gone well for anyone," Ida continued. The spirit blurred at the edges but then smoothed back into sharp lines. "There you are." Ida looked the spirit in the face and smiled. "I don't think any of us have said a word to you, and that was rude of us." 

Ida took another step forward. The spirit's weaving slowed. "As I said, I'm Ida, and that's Florence, and we were wondering if you know your name, dear."

The spirit looked around, and her hair smoothed back, falling into a neat bun that sat at the nape of her neck. Her hat straightened. She looked at Ida and shook her head.

"You don't know your name?" Ida asked. The spirit shook her head harder. "You do know your name." The spirit nodded. "But you don't remember how to speak." The spirit nodded. 

"You'll learn again. I'm sure of it," Ida said. "Florence here is quite gifted in speech therapy."

"I've helped people who've gone mute from trauma to speak again," Florence said, taking her first step forward. "I think the same exercises could work for you." 

The spirit looked back and forth between them. Her expression shifted from scared to confused. She touched her throat. 

"Would you like to come with us?" Ida asked. "I don't know yet all the ways we can help, but I think we can find some adventure for you."

The spirit's eyes sparked bright. She floated towards Ida, stopping a few feet away.

"Be warned," Florence said quietly, "you'll probably recognize our colleagues who have been out here before. The ones who tried to send you away." The spirit blurred, her dress ripping along the bottom hem. "But--" Florence held up her hands in a placating gesture. "But," she repeated when the tear began to repair itself. "They will not try to make you go away again. We want to help you however we can."

"Please," Ida said, holding out her hand, "we'd like to have you as a guest."

The spirit looked at Ida, then reached out. Her hand skimmed through Ida's like softly falling water. 

"That's fine," Ida said, seeing the way the spirit flinched. "I'm sure you can keep up with us. We'll show you the way to The House."

The spirit nodded and fell in step behind Florence and Ida. 

*

The spirit stayed hidden from nearly everyone for the first few weeks. She kept to herself in the back of one of the sitting rooms, wafting in the breeze and watching people go by. Florence and Ida took the lead in speaking with her and bringing her out of her shell. When she was spooked, she would scream. Books would fly and lamps would shatter, and she would flee, hiding even deeper in The House until her embarrassment faded.

"If you can scream, you can talk," Florence said after finding the spirit tucked into a bathroom cupboard. "I think it's time we worked on that."

Five weeks later, after hours of practice and encouragement, the spirit opened her mouth and said one word: "Gretel." 

"How lovely to meet you," Florence said, and she made introductions as they walked the grounds.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Yes, that's current Hazel's great-great-great-grandmother Hazel arguing to fight a vengeful spirit. 
> 
> 2\. Don't look at me as I procrastinate adding all these fucking Aunties to the spreadsheet. I did not mean to name so damn many of them, but they refused to go unnamed, which I get.
> 
> 3\. Before Gretel, vengeful spirits were handled in a variety of ways, all of which led to banishment. Gretel's the first one they've talked to. This experience is a massive change point in the way Blue Stones handle spirits. From this point forward, they attempt to talk first and offer help to any spirits who just plain don't want to leave. While you have only seen Gretel in the stories, there are other spirits working as messengers.
> 
> 4\. I really need to figure out exactly when the Blue Stones formed a proper society and school. After the Civil War, apparently.
> 
> 5\. Bertha's remark about the rule of all history is very important to the whole structure of the Blue Stones. If they don't remember it all--as it actually happened--it can be a huge detriment to their work. I know I've mentioned it in passing, but it's one of the things I always come back to in my own thoughts when I'm working on these stories.


End file.
